


You Want it Darker

by Mohini



Series: Bits and Pieces [7]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Anxiety, Headaches & Migraines, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Panic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-27 21:28:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17774507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mohini/pseuds/Mohini
Summary: He isn’t sure what the consequence is that he’s avoiding, only that it has to be sidestepped.





	You Want it Darker

If thine is the glory, then mine must be the shame.

                ~ Leonard Cohen, _You Want It Darker_

The sounds of the city should be comforting. The blaring horns have been there since before the first time they went to war. Night vendors, trains rumbling over tracks, and the jumbled sounds of that much humanity packed in like so many sardines in a tin – all of it is etched into his very bones.

Those bones can’t be still tonight. He has to move, to roam, to wear the edges of the panic down until his eyes can close and stay there, until exhaustion overtakes the whirling cogs that make up his consciousness so he can rest. He knows Steve worries when this happens, when the ghosts of nights past interrupt the present. He doesn’t know how to explain that it’s not okay, but it’s not _not okay_ either.

He doesn’t track mileage on his trek through the alleyways and broad streets, focus solely on one foot moving and then the next, long strides and steady breaths, a thing Nat refers to as combat breath – in for four, hold at capacity, then out. It’s nearing the first wispy pink hints of dawn as he climbs the steps to the apartment and lets himself in as quietly as he can. Not that he thinks Steve isn’t going to wake to the slight scrape of door and threshold. It’s the thought that counts, simple courtesy that his mother trained into him as surely as any handler forced from him the actions wrought from _ready to comply._

_Fuck,_ he chides himself, shaking his head to redirect thoughts away from hard chairs and electric currents. It’s too late. The phantom images pick up speed and race off unbidden, playing across the space behind his eyelids and lighting up the inside of his skull in a cacophony bright pain. The panic several miles walk was meant to dull down flares up, and he stumbles to the threadbare couch before his knees have a chance to buckle. It would have been a good plan, except for the yelp of a body when he lands.

“The fuck?” he mutters as his brain connects the moving human under him with the man he had - however unrealistically - intended not to wake by crashing on the couch.  

Steve looks like he’s ready to scold him but his face rearranges into open concern when Buck flinches backwards hard enough to land on the floor.

“Hey, hey, it’s fine,” Steve coaxes, but it’s too late to stop the full force of the panic from crashing back into Bucky’s skull. A hand reaching out to smooth hair away from his face tips the balance irreversibly to the wrong side, and Buck lashes out with a dull thump as metal meets flesh.

“Message received,” Steve grunts, and the tiny part of Bucky still processing language remembers that he’s not supposed to hit. Not anymore. Not now that he’s free. Whatever the fuck that means. It’s not an important enough part of the moment to be contemplated very hard, though. Right now, the thing that needs to happen is getting off this floor before… something. He isn’t sure what the consequence is that he’s avoiding, only that it has to be sidestepped.

His head has other ideas, pressure blossoming at the base of his skull as though he’s been hit with a 2x4. That irritating part of his brain that keeps running even when everything else goes to shit points out that 2x4s hurt less. It’s not a comfort.

A bottle appears in front of him, and he dry swallows a handful of the offerings within. Some random creation of Banner’s but it works sometimes. Often enough that he doesn’t care what he’s downing.

Time drifts, swirling harmlessly around him as he sits on the hardwood floor, body still as possible and mind drugged into temporary submission.

It’s fully light out when he opens his eyes and blinks up at Steve, still expecting reprimand. What he gets is a soft smile, a hand held out to help him off the floor, and a reminder that the first one awake is in charge of coffee.

 

 

 


End file.
